Virgil’s Map: Geography, Empire, and the Georgics(Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception)

Virgil’s Georgics depicts the world and its peoples in great detail, but this geographical interest has received little detailed scholarly attention. Hundreds of years later, readers in the British empire used the poem to reflect upon their travels in acts of imagination no less political than Virgil’s own. Virgil’s Map combines a comprehensive survey of the literary, economic, and political geography of the Georgics with a case study of its British imperial reception c. 1840–1930.

Part One charts the poem’s geographical interests in relation to Roman power in and beyond the Mediterranean; shifting readers’ attention away from Rome, it explores how the Georgics can draw attention to alternative, non-Roman histories. Part Two examines how British travellers quoted directly from the poem to describe peoples and places across the world, at times equating the colonial subjects of European empires to the ‘happy farmers’ of Virgil’s poem, perceived to be unaware, and in need, of the blessings of colonial rule.

Drawing attention to the depoliticization of the poem in scholarly discourse, and using newly discovered archival material, this interdisciplinary work seeks to re-politicize both the poem and its history in service of a decolonizing pedagogy. Its unique dual focus allows for an extended exploration, not just of geography and empire, but of Europe’s long relationship with the wider world.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

Introduction

Part One: Rome and the Roman empire, 29 BCE
1. The World and its Peoples
2. Provincializing Rome
3. Civil War
4. ‘All Italy’

Part Two: Britain and the British empire, c. 1840–1930
5. An Aesthetic Trend
6. The Georgics Abroad
7. ‘Happy Farmers’
8. The Georgics At Home

Conclusion: Towards a Decolonizing Pedagogy of Latin Literature

Appendix: The Geography of the Georgics
Notes
References
Index of passages from the Georgics
Index